Ok let’s calm down a bit here.
Keep to the topic. I don’t want to close this but if it get out of hand I will.
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What is the real topic?
How do I survive in a category that is too high for me?
When or why should or must I upgrade to next category?
always worth repeating, indeed!
I posted on the ZP forum and one of the responses was quoted here as good advice, so I wanted to chip in with my comments on this. I say this by the way as someone who dislikes sandbaggers, who is struggling to jump from C to B and doesn’t want to be called one.
It seems to me - and maybe I’m wrong in making this assumption - that the biggest problem area is the blurry boundaries between C and B and that - specifically - C cat is the No Man’s Land here. D is the wild west and people tend to float up through it quite quickly, but C is where people are getting stuck.
IMHO, part of that is that the transition from C to B is disproportionately hard and - speaking for myself - it’s just not fun being caught in that chasm.
I am right on the cusp of B and recently, regularly finish events with a 3.1 wkg average - it’s probably 2.9 - 3.0 on hillier routes, or 3.1 - 3.2 on crits, where my higher weight is more helpful. But, I’m ‘officially’ a C. I haven’t done that many races, but recently I’ve got into the C podium spots and now feel confident that if I enter a C race, I can stay with the front group, follow any breaks, hold any attacks and be in contention at the finish (at least, based on ZP results). On the advice of others, I therefore started entering B events.
But if I go up to B, I get dropped in the first 30 seconds, mostly, unless it’s a crit. I literally can’t even grab the wheel of the bunch out of the starting pens. If for some miracle I do, then after 5 - 10 minutes of hanging on I get dropped and eventually the Cs will whizz past me because I’m put so much into the start that I’m disadvantaged for the remainder of the event. The only thing making me more competitive is that I’m losing so much weight by training that my w/kg is improving, but it’s the weight loss driving that faster than any fitness/performance gains.
Others say that riding with Bs is good for you and it’s all progression, so I now tend to enter B events. But it’s an entirely different sport: it’s gone from road racing to time trialling.
If a high C enters a B event, then they’ll be dropped at the start and the whole thing basically becomes a solo ride. You don’t get any camaraderie, no tactics come into play, no drafting, no working as a team, no surges when someone tries to attack. And - riding on your own - it gets boring, demoralising and your effort inevitably drops when you realise that actually there is no point to it: you are destined to come last in your category and you’re not going to catch anyone, because they’re all pulling ahead of you. If there are other ‘rising categories riders’ then it’s fine, but usually there aren’t.
I get a MUCH better workout in the Cs than I now do in the Bs, because if I ride in the Cs I am not the one in full control; I have surges to respond to, there is variability in my effort and others can put me through the wringer. In a B event, the pace is self-controlled and constant (once I’m dropped).
I totally agree with the need to remove sandbaggers, but there are other things that could be done:
Break the categories down into D, C, C+, B, B+ etc
Rather than the starting pens order be determined by race join time, you could arrange it by w/kg as an effective handicap so that lower Cs/Bs etc start at the front of the pen, whereas ‘established/higher B/Cs’ etc start at the back. In most events, that’s a 10 - 15m gap that won’t change the world, but it will take the sting out of the start from the rising cat riders. If I join a B event late, there is NO WAY I will be able to put enough power down to bridge the gap at the start
Add an option for some events to have a proper lead-in, where riders are elastic banded together. It won’t stop people dropping the power down when the flag drops, but it will smooth things out a bit
I appreciate that this is a difficult issue and - to be honest - I’m hopeful that my continued health improvement and weight loss will render it irrelevant for me as I’ll soon by a ‘comfortable’ B based on w/kg, but there are many others like me, new to Zwift, for whom they have a similar experience.
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This has been discussed on the forum to length. I personally think race ranking is the way to go, every racer gets a rank based on how they perform in races. Then have dynamic categories, for a small race every one start together and as the fields gets bigger more categories (starting groups) get enabled. So a race with 100 riders will have 4 groups of 25 and a race of 1000 will have 20 groups of 50. That way you can be at the top of the group one day and the bottom the other day.
No more entering lower categories no more sandbagging just fun fun fun.
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I agree, the difference between the top of B and the bottom seems to great.
B & B+ would be good.
Nicely said!
The same chasm exists between B and A, trust me. After a few months of reading/posting and trying to figure it out, the answer seems to be… try harder. That’s it. I gave it everything I had today - really punched it up the hills - and didn’t finish last. Felt more like an interval workout rather than the solo ride you described (I know what you mean there).
I really, really, want to know why ZwiftHQ doesn’t even seem to consider this. Is it a resource thing? Do they simply not care? Are they afraid it will deter people who like to sandbag from racing? I mean… I genuinely want to understand what I am missing that they don’t want to apply such an obvious improvement… (after having calculated the total amount of subscription fees I have paid Zwift so far, I would go as far as to say I even feel a bit entitled to a response 
)
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In one of the latest Zwift podcasts, three Zwift employees talked about their own sandbagging (racing in B as A riders (or whatever) because they get dropped at the start in A races) without seeing any problems with it. ’Nuff said.
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Racing B as an A should be eliminated if cat enforcement was imposed.
So many areas for potential improvement.
I’m never in a front group.
I hoped the pace partners would attract folks wanting a recovery ride or just a hard ride in a group.
I guess it has not decreased the problems.
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I think the gaps are too big across the board. I think it makes sense and would be easy to do, is to add two more letter groups, keep the total over all the groups the same but make the gap in each group smaller. So the new B would be something like 3.2 - 3.6 with that range you’d still get beat by the higher riders, but not crushed. May actually feel like you’re in the race. I truly think they are going to lose a bunch of people who like the racing aspect. We all have different motivations for ridding Zwift, some are badges, some are group rides, and some are racing. They’ve taken racing away from me, and before you know it all’s tell me to just train harder, I’m getting up in years (57), and have been doing this a while and I’m just not getting any faster. Father time is undefeated.
Please shrink the groups.
See this link.
There are way to many variables the only way to fix it is grouping by results (rankings) you win a few you upgrade you finish last you downgrade. We could have dynamic groups so you are not always on the top or the bottom
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If true, that would explain why the extremely simple ‘auto-assign categories’ hasn’t been implemented. Would be single biggest improvement in racing. The ‘sandbaggers’ that control their power are annoying, but aren’t completely changing races as much as a B rider on the front does in a C race.
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That makes sense, at least (it sounds like anyway) you would for the most part always be “in” the race. Which is why I said smaller spreads in the current system would do the same thing. IMO the gap is to large for all Cats, as I’ve said before it’s one thing to lose or get dropped, but completely another to get crushed in the first 150m.
Doak - have you done uncategorized races? Open ones that really have lots of riders from all categories? I’m doing a series of them now that’s reasonably well attended (most races between 100 adn 300 riders) and I find that good B’s can stick with A’s on anything but a sustained climb - and on flatter routes/shorter courses, we’ll end up with C’s in the pack right to the end in some races. And sprint speed/ability doesn’t really seem to map to the 20min based categories much at all, so the results look really weird if you’re expecting results of [A’s, then B’s, C’s, finally D’s] The D’s mostly get dropped into their own groups in the first few minutes, and on most courses the final sprint is contested by A’s and strong Bs - but very interesting racing.
That only works if the groups are enforced at sign up/entry. You’d still be racing people who either don’t know or simply don’t care.
Nobody has told me yet why B’s can race in C, C’s in D etc. Since I was mistakenly moved up to B I sign up as a B even though I’m getting my face kicked in. I don’t want to screw up other peoples race by them thinking I’m in their Cat when I’m not.
Can someone please explain why people can’t be blocked from signing up in a lower Cat.
Let people race up if they want, but letting them race down is pure stupidity.
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Could you please respond to my racing below cat question from earlier today? Super curious as to the reasoning.
That is the rules you should race in your proper category but people do what ever they want, so Zwift power will filter out those not in the correct category after the fact when the race is over and that person already spoiled the fun for every one.
This is the age old question.
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